After a few e-mails back and forth, I have found the following information:

- Helio did not give Tony any rank. Tony was already ranked by another instructor when Helio asked him to teach. We'll need to eventually ask Tony who originally ranked him.

- Ranieri was a brown belt when he began to train under Helio. Helio has not given Ranieri a black belt. We'll need to ask Ranieri who gave him his black belt.

- Helio does not use the Gracie name when teaching or in marketing; he uses his own name. The mentions of 'Gracie' on the X3 site, outside of the use of 'Gracie Barra', are a bit odd.

Helio was very nice to take time out of his day to reply to my e-mails. He became concerned when I kept asking 1-2 questions in each subsequent e-mail because he believes both Tony and Ranieri to be good people and good instructors.

I can field this one: No. Hayastan gives belt rank for its gi system and numerical "level" ranks for its no gi. In addition, Gokor has given people Judo rank, and LeBell used to give out belts in his system. No one there gives belts in SAMBO, and it would be odd for Gokor to do so. He came up under the MoS system in Armenia.

Now darkness comes; you don't know if the whales are coming. - Royce Gracie

After a few e-mails back and forth, I have found the following information:

- Helio did not give Tony any rank. Tony was already ranked by another instructor when Helio asked him to teach. We'll need to eventually ask Tony who originally ranked him.

- Ranieri was a brown belt when he began to train under Helio. Helio has not given Ranieri a black belt. We'll need to ask Ranieri who gave him his black belt.

- Helio does not use the Gracie name when teaching or in marketing; he uses his own name. The mentions of 'Gracie' on the X3 site, outside of the use of 'Gracie Barra', are a bit odd.

Helio was very nice to take time out of his day to reply to my e-mails. He became concerned when I kept asking 1-2 questions in each subsequent e-mail because he believes both Tony and Ranieri to be good people and good instructors.

Arce met Soneca at ADCC 2005 when they were both coaching, and says he is legit.

Now darkness comes; you don't know if the whales are coming. - Royce Gracie

I wrote to Gokor to aks about Tucci, whether he trained with him, and if he was ranked in sambo under him.

I had a conversation with Paul Booe, Gokor's East Coast rep and webmaster. Paul says he does not have Tucci in his database, but that there are "old school guys" who are not in it. Those guys would have to get permission to use the Hayastan name, but probably wouldn't be punished if they didn't.

Paul says he met Tucci once at an event, was told he was one of Gokor's guys, and that Tucci had to leave and attend to his fighters before Booe could probe him.

Now darkness comes; you don't know if the whales are coming. - Royce Gracie

Tony Tucci is relatively well known in Atlanta. I actually worked with him a little bit one time when I was training in boxing over at x3. To my knowledge no one has ever had anything bad to say about him and he seemed like a nice guy. (I liked him)

That being said, x3 does carry a bit of a commercial vibe and like all commercial gyms they probably polish up credentials to make them palatable for general consumption and things probably get lost in translation between the guys that run the fighting and the guys that make the website.

"Were you a black belt?"

"We didn't really have belts, but I was an instructor and had such and such credentials"

"Well we need to say that you were a black belt on the website because we're a commercial gym trying to appeal to the masses and everyone loves a black belt"